The TV80
pocket television, also known as the Flat Screen TV
(FTV), was the fruit of an obsession which
Clive Sinclair had held for more than 20 years. As early as
1963, near the very start of his career as an inventor of
electronics, he had sought to create a handheld television
set. His earlier attempts resulted in the Microvision
(1966 - launched but never actually sold) and TV1A/B/C/D (1976-78 - four
models for the US, UK and continental European markets).

The spectacularly successful Sinclair computers
had been produced with the primary objective of raising capital
for other, "innovative" projects such as the pocket
TV and C5.
With the money rolling in from Spectrum
sales, Sinclair was now able to realise his dream of producing
a slimline flat-screen pocket TV which (unlike his earlier
attempts) did not use a conventional, power-hungry cathode-ray
tube. Instead, the electron beam creating the TV80's picture
was produced by a specially designed CRT set in the side rather
than the back of the television, being deflected through a
right angle by a strong electric field to hit the phosphor
screen.

It proved far from straightforward to develop
a suitable package within which to incorporate the tube. Sinclair's
design team went through numerous prototypes for what was
originally to be called the Microvision 2700. Some of these
still exist in the Brighton-based International
Vintage Electronics Museum and show vividly how
- in marked contrast to the much more rigid design constraints
of the ZX
Spectrum - a wide range of different ideas was
tried. One proposal featured a folding clamshell, rather like
that of the Psion organisers or Hewlett-Packard's Jornada.
Another utilised a shallow V-shape, evidently designed to
be grippable (but probably abandoned for being neither truly
pocketable nor capable of easy use on a tabletop). The designs
eventually converged on the version eventually selected, which
was about the size of a paperback book.

The TV80 was not a great success and
did not recoup the £4m Sinclair had invested in its
development. (The name refers to its £80 selling price;
the set was often marketed as the "Flat Screen Television"
or FTV.) It was difficult and expensive to produce, and had
an extremely narrow viewing angle. Only about 15,000 were
sold. And obsolescence was already on the horizon: New
Scientist warned prophetically that the TV80's ingenious
technology would be short-lived, in view of the liquid crystal
display technology being developed by Casio and other Japanese
electronics firms. Today, every pocket TV on the market uses
LCDs and the cathode ray tube itself - a technology little
changed since its invention in the early twentieth century
- is under threat from flatscreen plasma and LCD displays.